At the moment, I can't help but feel that my worrying about our landing was a bit unnecessary.

  I had been expecting everything you see. I had expected all the surrounding undead to start attacking us with their full force. I had expected this to be enough to overwhelm the strike force. That the defenders of this ship would be quickly overwhelmed by the undead. That we wouldn't even be able to hold against the creatures for more than an hour.

  I had expected that the fighting would have spilled onto the ship. Then things would have truly gone to shit. The thing with fighting is that your surroundings are the first thing to get fucked over. I am the only person able to fix the ship right now.

  Now, I will be able to fix the ship if it faces minor damage. A couple dozen people fighting five to six times the undead does not lead to minor damage, though. Such damage would have required an entire team of mages to fix it. Mages that I don't have right now.

  It turns out I did not need to be so worried about it. (Well, worry is the wrong word here. I had worked myself into a panic.) The strikeforce is doing an amazing job of holding the enemy back. They are controlling the mass of undead that are attacking us in a much better way than I had expected them to. There is not even a single undead that has managed to enter my ship. (It has been about half an hour since the fighting started.)

  Each of the factions has taken charge of a direction around the ship. They are holding these directions pretty admirably. It makes me realize that I have underestimated the strikeforce.

  Right now, we are acting as a beacon for the undead for a couple of leagues around us. You don't even need a particularly strong mana to sense it. Let's just say that my ship is absorbing a significant chunk of the ambient mana here to recharge. That includes quite a bit of the death mana, too. It still would have been fine if the mana had been absorbed into storage. Right now, all of it is being expelled. That should be lighting us up for all the creatures around us.

  I had not expected the performance of some of these factions. The most predictable of them are the mayfires, ironically. (Who I am supposed to know the least about.) They are presently guarding the southern part of the ship. Right now, beasts and birds of fire are attacking the undead coming into their sight.

  Amelia Mayfire is attacking any undead that these fire beasts miss with a hammer of flames. The hammer is a good choice here. The blunt force is enough to disintegrate most skeletons. The fire is good at destroying those that remain. They are destroying quite a few of these creatures.

  They are not going all out here. The creatures that they summon are a tenth of what they can actually summon. That would allow them to instantly destroy the undead.

  That would also mean that they will quickly burn through their reserves. It would also reveal their presence to the undead fighting in the field. That would be enough to leave them helpless for the next batch of undead to attack them.

  Well, they are holding their line pretty well. A few undead could sneak through, but my troop would be more than enough to hold them. The most surprising thing for me is the Aegis, though. I have heard for so long that the Aegis was supposed to be strong enough to challenge the sentinels. That they are more than enough to do the missions that we sentinels do.

  I am somehow struggling to believe that right now. The reason for that is the fact that the Aegis is struggling to even hold its present position.

  The other four members of that troop have no idea how they are supposed to be working together. Their magic comes in each other's path. The spear wielder keeps trying to rush into the swordsman's range. The axe wielder has almost managed to behead the other swordsman. The two swordsmen keep trying to fight the same enemy. Due to this, neither can really properly use their weapons.

  I would say that they are fighting with about as much unity as a bunch of dwarves in an elemental stone quarry. (Which is to say not much.) Still, I can't criticize them since they are holding their lines. Scolding them is only possible if they screw up big somehow. I would have thought that somebody as powerful as Anthony would have a better team assigned to him.

  The man himself is not showing a good performance. That is more due to the nature of his magic, if I am being honest. It just costs too much to use against undead. It would still have an impact if he were wise about how he used it. The man just uses it to attack whatever enemy he can see at the moment.

  They are holding their line, though, and the undead still can't pass through them. I still have my cannons aimed towards the north, which is the region that they are guarding. It would waste quite a bit of mana but I don't need to worry about if they screw up.

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  At least the sentinels are showing a much better performance than this. I did not think that they would be doing this good. I had assumed that with the loss of Lauren (who is on the ship with my troop right now.), they would be in a similar situation to the Aegis. Where they would not be able to work together at all.

  We have always counted on Lauren taking all the blows while we hit our enemies with all we have got. It is a good strategy, but one that makes us very dependent on Lauren. The other three people in that troop are managing pretty well without her. The first thing is that John is controlling his aggressiveness.

  Otherwise, the man would be the first to charge at the enemy. Often, he would be the first to enter into the battle, with even Lauren coming into action a few moments later. Considering that Lauren is supposed to be the one taking the blows, that often puts John in a risky position.

  He is being more careful in how he fights right now. He is not letting the creature get close enough to hit.

  Even if an undead comes closer, Emilia is there to strike it dead. (Right now, there are ten undead surrounding that duo, and none have managed to hit them.) The strike is not enough to kill the undead. Still, it is strong enough to push back the undead as John catches his breath.

  If both of them fail, then there is always Eric. The man's arrows always seem to strike the creatures that would have struck the two of them. (They are not as strong as his two arrows against the giant.) That is why I would think that it is pretty unlikely that an undead will be sneaking in from the east.

  Still, at the moment I would say that I am the most surprised by sages. I would say that they are doing the most impressive work in holding back the undead. They are simply casting so many spells at the same time. Every single member of that group has erected a barrier around the region they are assigned to. I count a barrier of air mana, earth mana and water mana.

  Even if any undead were to break through these barriers, they are in for a surprise. The simple quantity of spells that they weave in a moment is mind-boggling to me. The most fascinating among them is searcher Amelia. The lady's grasp of the spells that she is casting is absurd.

  The most impressive thing is that she is casting multiple spells perfectly at the same time. She is throwing fireballs at one undead. At the same time, she is throwing a wind blade at another undead.

  She is doing all of this while maintaining a barrier of air around the west part of the ship. I know that casting multiple spells is nothing special in itself. I have to do that a few times myself, and I am no expert on spellslinging.

  To cast multiple spells where there is no mana leaking from the spell model is an achievement. That would require you to achieve a very absurd degree of control over your vital mana. You also need to be able to split your attention on a dozen different things at the same time.

  To think that the scholars were hiding such a talent among them. The searcher Patrick can also be considered a pretty good mage. The man is completely outshone by searcher Amelia, though. Well, I had expected something of the sort from the searchers. I know that the searchers are supposed to be the combat-oriented part of the scholars.

  I did not expect somebody like Searcher Arnold, though. The man is a support mage. I don't have much idea about this type of magic. All I know about them and their magic is that they can support a mage when they are casting their spells. They can reduce the mana cost of a spell. They can increase the impact of the spell and other such things.

  It is a pretty rare field of magic to pursue. Then again, what else can you expect from the scholars? Even we (who can be considered allies.) can never tell what kind of magic they have ready at hand.

  Well, whatever you say, I had not expected that the scholars would have such a strong team with them. Especially one full of people my age. You wouldn't think that to be the case, the way that they rely on us and the legion. Well, the scholars do like to exist as an enigma, I guess.

  To get back to the point, None of the factions are anywhere near failing. The north is lagging a bit, but as I already pointed I have something ready if anything happens.

  I had never expected them to even pull off what they are doing right now. The goal always had been to keep the creatures busy for as long as they could. Every moment that the undead are held back is that much more mana being sent into my mana reserves. Even a few hours of recharging will buy us days of travelling.

  Well, even as I am recording, I am making sure to keep busy. As for what I am doing right now. I am checking up on every formation on this ship.

  Strictly speaking, I don't need to do it after just entering the bone pits. Still, it would be better if I check up on every formation on the ship. After all the formations here have been exposed to the death mana outside for quite a while.

  The death mana here is much more concentrated than it is in the Bone Valley. I have to think that the death mana has already reached a state where we would need to channel our vital mana to counter it. (I can't tell from inside the environmental formation, though.)

  Any failure of my formations would be very catastrophic, now. Especially if it were to fail in the middle of a flight. At present, it will just take me a couple of hours to be sure that the ship will be able to fly without any sudden failures. I will have to start doing that soon enough, now that I think about it.

  Until now, I have been checking up on the formation that is holding the captive. It was a bit of a risk to hang like that when any undead could attack me, but that was a risk I had to take. After all, the prisoner escaping in the middle of the night is a more deadly outcome than any undead attack.

  Right now, I will have to check every other formation as quickly as I can. I think that it would take about a couple more hours before I have enough mana to take off. (It would take a couple of days for my reserves to get full. We can't hold for that long, though.)